Project Team Dr. R. Depping

The project group is interested in different aspects of the molecular oxygen homeostasis. The emphasis of our studies is on the molecular mechanisms which are involved in the cellular regulatory pathways. We lay the focus on the controlled passage of proteins through the nuclear pore complexes, which is a central and very important event in the regulatory circuit of oxygen sensing. The nuclear pore complex is the bottleneck any nuclear protein with a molecular weight of >40-60 kDa has to break. Particularly transcription factors have to pass through the nuclear pore complexe in a stringently controlled manner. In the classical model of the nuclear protein transport the translocation is mediated by a nuclear localization signal (NLS) which can be found in the primary structure of the cargo protein. The NLS is recognized by a group of nuclear transport receptors referred to as Importins. The whole process of nuclear protein transport can be regulated on different levels, whereby especially the function of the importins represents a very interesting aspect. Therefore, the question of the regulation of the nuclear import of the molecular oxygen sensor proteins (PHDs) and the oxygen homeostasis controlling transcription factors (HIFs) is of fundamental importance in our group.